The Williamsport Bureau of Police has removed the assistant police chief position for next year in the city’s proposed 2026 budget, which includes a half-mill real estate tax increase.

“If I am looking at this correctly, I see no assistant chief budgeted,” said Councilman Jon Mackey, chairman of the city public safety committee. “But we are adding to first-year officers to keep the complement at 51.”

“That is correct,” said police Capt. Justin Ottaviano, who presented the police budget to council.

“To save on cost, the assistant chief — no, we will not fill that position,” he said.

“Captains, there would be two,” he said, or three administrators instead of the four presently.

“This is our effort to attempt to keep our manpower and get creative with saving money for the city,” Ottaviano said.

Replacing the assistant chief, or removing that position, is estimated to save an additional 4% a year, Ottaviano said. He added how this can change, because there are people who could retire.

“We also just found out that we have an officer that is possibly … he is waiting for his orders but he is possibly deploying in December and won’t be back until (the following Dec. 26),” he said. “That would be a spot we would have to hold,” he said. “It would be money that would be saved.” “It is not losing an officer, per say, but it is losing an officer.”

Mackey then asked what was happening with the assistant chief.

“Jason (Bolt) what’s happening with you?” he asked. “Technically, are you going back on the street?” Mackey asked.

“We don’t know,” Slaughter said. “Obviously, Chief (Justin) Snyder is going to be retiring,” he said. The city is looking to save money to go with the three command staff and save money in that assistant chief arena, the mayor stressed.

“Obviously, we’d have to go through the process of who is going to be the next chief and all that,” Slaughter said.

“I guess I was not fully aware of when Chief Snyder was retiring,” Mackey said.

“Well, we don’t know that yet,” Slaughter said. “We have to wait on collective bargaining.”

So with retirements, coupled by possible military deployment, it might not necessarily be attrition, but it will be attrition based off of those folks not being here, Slaughter said.

“It is not attrition as in we have an employee permanently exiting and then not backfilling it, but we will have lower staffing levels over a particular time period where we will have savings ,” Council President Adam Yoder said.

“Yes,” Snyder said. “And essentially we’ve been doing that already, because we have yet to meet our 51 complement since we’ve implemented the 51 slots,” he said. “We have yet to do a full year yet with the 51 complement,” he said. “We are slotted for the 51 complement and look at that as a cost savings but we end up pushing that to the overtime cost,” Snyder said.

The overtime is budgeted at $150,000, and adds $26,000 for a more “realistic” projection on those costs.

Money is available for replacement of aging vehicles and many other highlights of a police budget reviewed for council.

Overall, the department anticipated a 4.94 % increase in 2026, Ottaviano said.

Among the biggest cost drivers was health insurance, which accounted for 3% of the 4.94%, which is an increase of $302,000.

To a question on the hiring schedule, the hiring list was just opened up and the department is receiving applications, Snyder said.

“We start testing in February,” Ottaviano said.